


The Successors

by Tyler_KB



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: A is a woman, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Gen, No Romance, Parallels, Past Child Abuse, Religious Cults, Russian Mafia, Wammy House, Wammy's Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 19:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyler_KB/pseuds/Tyler_KB
Summary: A and Matt - Those Who Died YoungB and Mello - Those Who Were BurnedL and Near - Those Who Were The Last





	The Successors

Roger had seen many kids grow up, being in charge of an orphanage gave you the opportunity after all.

Many kids at Wammy’s ended up becoming great.

Many ended up dead or crumbling from the pressure.

But six kids in particular stood out to Roger, six kids he helped in raising, who he watched rise and fall.

The successors and their predecessors.

* * *

L was brilliant, Roger knew that for a fact, however by the time Roger had taken charge of Wammy’s House, L was already solving cases and a successor was in the process of being found.

L’s past was a mystery to everyone but to Watari, L himself, and Roger.

The files were burned, any trace of who L was before Wammy’s was destroyed.

It was really for the best, his past was disturbing, disgusting, a nightmare, however you would never guess by just watching L, he hid it too well.

In the beginning, L didn’t travel.

He solved cases from his room in Wammy’s, ate with the other children, and attended classes the same as anyone else.

It wasn’t until he was 11, after solving a particularly difficult case and received national recognition, that his travels began.

A year later A arrived.

A was 10 years old, an orphan from Pakistan who was just as brilliant as L with just as many quirks.

She thrived with technology and received top grades in all her classes.

Watari decided she would be L’s successor, and so the training began.

Five months after the decision, 10 year old B arrived at the orphanage from Scotland, found after his mother was arrested for suspected murder of multiple men, including B’s father.

B was equally as brilliant and odd as the other two.

He thrived in reading people, he saw a person's entire character and psychology with a calculated look. The other children avoided him, trying to stay away from the boy who could read their traumas, the traumas they burned upon coming to Wammy’s House.

His ability to see names without being told them scared the other children, who all had their own aliases and hid their real names from everyone, if they even knew their names themselves, but A loved him and the two became fast friends.

It was a competition between the two of them, who could beat the other.

Watari decided B would be the ‘backup’ successor to L.

B decided he would be the first.

When they were 17, the two met L for a meeting about what being L entailed.

They had spoken before multiple times, one might even call the three friends to some degree.

The meeting lasted a day, L was 19 and a world renowned detective, he had much to explain to the two people who would one day success him.

Sometimes Roger wonders if it was odd talking to the people waiting for your death so they could take your spot.

L left the next day to Germany, and both A and B seemed to have a light lit in them as they put everything into studying and learning.

Three months later A shot herself.

There was a change in B after the funeral, everyone noticed it.

His best friend was dead, the final grip on his sanity was gone.

The madness in his eyes became brighter, his smirks and laughter became meaner, and his health declined as he refused to sleep or eat.

He changed his appearance to a look that was strikingly similar to L’s and his fascination with death took a sharp turn from interesting to deadly, the entire orphanage was on edge.

B left Wammy’s six months after the funeral, and two years later Watari called Roger to give him the haunting news that the murders in Los Angeles, the case L had just finished, were committed by B.

L was alone, he had always been alone it felt but now he really was.

He had few friends, B and A were what he had and now one was dead and the other was in prison after committing three murders for a case L himself had to solve.

Roger wondered when L knew the murderer was his old friend, the man who was supposed to become L upon his own death.

He wondered what it felt like to see your friend with burns covering him after what B had planned to be his death but what had ended up not killing him in the end.

The Kira case was difficult, Roger knew it would be from the sound of Watari’s voice when he called to say he and L would be going to Japan.

It shouldn’t have shocked him, when the news was shown a year into the case, that B was among those murdered by Kira.

Roger has known it would be a possibly, B was a criminal after all, but the news still hit his core as his thoughts drifted to L, the last of the three to be alive.

He knew the case was hard, it would be a difficult road that took months if not years, however he really didn’t expect the case to be L’s end.

Two years into the investigation he received the word that L was dead.

The last of the predecessors.

* * *

A’s successor was Matt.

Matt was brought to Wammy’s two months after B left from an abusive household in Ireland, and the then 11 year old was an obvious choice for L’s successor.

Watari agreed, and so his training began.

Like A, he was a genius when it came to technology.

He studied but it didn’t consume his life, he tried to have fun as much as possible, much like A originally did before everything caved in.

L didn’t contact Matt like he did with A and B, maybe he felt guilty about what had happened, maybe he wanted to protect himself.

Mello was B’s successor.

The 11 year old was constantly angry, and would lash out violently, the same as B would often do in the beginning, and the only one who could calm him was Matt.

Mello came from Russia, and was partially raised in the mafia, as his father had worked for them.

He and B had both been partially raised by criminals, and had the personality and survival instincts to show for it.

But Mello worked.

He studied and taught himself everything.

He could read people and manipulate them, he adjusted his personality when he wanted to in order to make people like him, make them forget information and do whatever Mello wanted.

Mello would get into fights with anyone, but Watari determined he was perfect for being L’s successor, and so Mello threw himself into learning everything he needed to become L, to be anything but the Backup.

Near was L’s successor.

Near was brought to Wammy’s a year after B left, 8 years old with buckets worth of trauma from being raised in a cult.

He was non-verbal the majority of the time and communicated in a mix of American and British Sign Language.

He was brilliant, and Watari quickly determined he was the top contender for being L’s successor.

Mello and Matt fell behind Near, but the three were friends, no matter how oddly Mello showed his friendship.

They stuck together, the three of them only had one another to rely on.

If only they knew how deadly that would be.

Roger knew how this would end the second Mello, much like B did all those years ago, left Wammy’s House and restarted his life in the mafia.

Like A, Matt died first.

Shot to death, the image of A’s body, a bullet through her head, flashed through Roger’s mind as he heard the news.

Mello went next.

Killed by Kira, but not before being severely burned.

B’s nearly unrecognizable face haunted Roger’s thoughts as he heard the news from Near, he wondered if Mello’s looked similar.

However, Kira case was solved.

Near finished what L could not.

But Roger knew Near was not happy, he watched as Near descended into guilt, pulling away from everyone in an effort to protect himself from getting close to anyone else in fear that they too would die.

As in the end, much like L had been, Near was alone.

The last of the successors.


End file.
